Roman Catholic Proper 24Revised Common Lectionary Proper 19

Complementary Hebrew Scripture from the Torah: Genesis 7:6-10; 8:1-5

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth. And Noah with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days the waters of the flood came on the earth.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated; and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

If you return, O Israel,says the Lord,if you return to me,if you remove your abominations from my presence,and do not waver,and if you swear, “As the Lord lives!”in truth, in justice, and in uprightness,then nations shall be blessed by him,and by him they shall boast.

For thus says the Lord to the people of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem:

Break up your fallow ground,and do not sow among thorns.Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,remove the foreskin of your hearts,O people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,or else my wrath will go forth like fire,and burn with no one to quench it,because of the evil of your doings.

Declare in Judah, and proclaim in Jerusalem, and say:

Blow the trumpet through the land;shout aloud and say,“Gather together, and let us gointo the fortified cities!”Raise a standard toward Zion,flee for safety, do not delay,for I am bringing evil from the north,and a great destruction.A lion has gone up from its thicket,a destroyer of nations has set out;he has gone out from his placeto make your land a waste;your cities will be ruinswithout inhabitant.Because of this put on sackcloth,lament and wail:“The fierce anger of the Lordhas not turned away from us.”

On that day, says the Lord, courage shall fail the king and the officials; the priests shall be appalled and the prophets astounded. Then I said, “Ah, Lord God, how utterly you have deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘It shall be well with you,’ even while the sword is at the throat!”

Complementary Psalm 51:1-10

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight,so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.¹Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

Semi-continuous Psalm 14

Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good.The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.¹Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the Lord?

There they shall be in great terror, for God is with the company of the righteous.You would confound the plans of the poor, but the Lord is their refuge.O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion! When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

New Testament Epistle Lesson: 2 Peter 2:1-10a

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers the way of truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment; and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment—especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.